Comments on: New Orleans For Sale?

By: Claudia

Claudia — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:09:29 +0000

Hi Amanda, thanks for stopping by. I have really enjoyed reading the range of perspectives and approaches to this continued travesty. We all seem to agree, however, that making a spectacle of someone else’s suffering is never cool and neither is standing idly by if you are presented with the opportunity to help.

Frieda really does get us thinking, doesn’t she? If she runs across one of the opportunities for us folks outside of Nola to be part of the 9th ward solution, then I’ll make sure we post it here for anyone who is interested.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:16:31 +0000

I spent last summer working in New Orleans, and I didn’t go to the 9th ward once– I never had a true reason to go there, and the idea of going there just to see the devastation struck me as exploitive. Most people I know don’t understand why I didn’t make the trip there– but work never took me there, and I never met up with friends there, so if I had gone, if would have been with no more purpose than gawking at the sorrow of others. And that, I feel, would have been disrespectful.

By: Frieda

Frieda — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:22:41 +0000

Thank you for your responses to this piece! So many great questions have been raised here. Some of you responded with the question of “what’s the better way?” How do we keep people paying attention to New Orleans? I would argue that the $35 bus tour certainly isn’t helping. That money isn’t going towards anyone’s hurricane recovery. I can promise you that.

The problem in New Orleans is that so many people continue to profit off of this disaster. I like to call it “Disaster Pimping.” The tours, the contractors, the never-ending grant money (all in the name of “recovery”)…. It’s a well which doesn’t seem to be running dry anytime soon. But sadly, this is not new to the people of New Orleans. The residents of this city have always been dumped on. When Mardi Gras time comes, what happens? People travel to the Big Easy far and wide to let their “hair down.” And what do they leave behind? Their trash in the streets for the working poor to pick up. Even the Mississippi River has cashed in on the deal. The waste from all of its bordering states flows from north to south and right into the Gulf.

What can never be captured in a tour or on anybody’s disaster footage is the way in which the trauma of Katrina still lingers in the soul of every child and every adult that experienced this tragedy. People still remember sitting on that interstate, waiting for help. People still remember how quickly that water rushed in. How do we repair the psychological damage that Katrina left behind?

I bet no one would pay to see that.

By: Cassandra

Cassandra — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:35:06 +0000

EXCELLENT short film!

I was in the Lower 9th Ward two years ago, worked with the only charity in the lower 9th ward at the time to clean up a yard or two very close to the area in this short. While another part of my group built a playground for a charity in Algiers. After clean up we visited the only open science and math school open in the 9th ward at that time.

Not nearly enough done on our trip, so I’m not bragging but I said that to say that the devastation was so staggering and so embarrassing to still be there that it caused me to do more and to give more and to try harder to be better and do better by NOLA, so I am on the fence about this. Because if just one of these tours becomes the catalyst to changing everything for the lower 9th, ultimately I can’t be mad and have to just deal with the disgusting tours that don’t affect change.

In my far removed but deeply concerned opinion, if you put yourself in the position to have to judge the motives of the GAWKERS you take the focus off of the ISSUE which is to FIX the Lower 9th WARD.

See the problem is that we should ONLY have pictures left to remind us of Katrina, THERE SHOULDN’T BE ANY PHYSICAL EVIDENCE LEFT of this terrible tragedy and TRAVESTY.

And that is the REAL crime here, the fact that there is still TIME in 2009 to go run and gawk at in the lower 9th…

It’s 2009 y’all, I don’t know about you, but I need to do better and I shall.

By: Thinking Aloud

Thinking Aloud — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:16:18 +0000

From the bus they can say that they were there, but does that matter? They can take photos and videos to show to their friends at cocktail parties as they discuss the ills of the nation. But did the bus ticket help anyone. Did a portion of the proceeds go to help the tenants of the 9th ward?

Any profit from devastation and lives lost is horrible. Especially when no one is doing anything really real to change the lives of the people who were displaced, devastated, denied what the government really could have done to help.

By: Doret

Doret — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 04:15:22 +0000

To ride through peoples living pain on vacation while taking pictures is just so OMG are you kidding me. It looks they were on some kind of safari outing. So how much of that bus tour money is making it back to the Lower 9? Look I made a funny. I do think its different when News crews go, b/c they’re not so some bus tour. Some of what they film may end up on the news. Even if it doesn’t the good reporters (with hearts) will still get the word out. I can’t remember the last time any news station have talked about the Lower 9. Some of the people taking this tour may justify it by saying they gave to such and such charity to help rebuild New Orleans. To them I say, your contributions have not to made it to the Lower 9. You have no right and even if it did you still have no right. I hope a few of the Lower 9 ghosts follow the picture takin, chillin on an AC van folk, to their hotels and give them a good scare.

By: carleen

carleen — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:37:50 +0000

It seems to me that we should all see what happened and burn it into our memories. But there is something sickening about doing so from an air-conditioned bus and taking pictures as souvenirs. I also get creeped out by tours like the gospel Sunday morning tours viewing folks in their “natural habitats.” And avoided going on a tour of an Indian reservation for the same reasons. Remember in Slumdog when the tourists (American or European) paid the guide to show them the slums of Mumbai? I heard a friend of a friend tell about her guide in India taking her to his home, which he shared with something like 6 people and was no bigger than my friend’s living room. I was ashamed for that woman telling the story, and am still not sure that Slumdog’s popularity wasn’t related to 1st world guilt. But how do we address these issues if we don’t see them? Do you stop each tourist and weigh their intentions before you let them see? I’m with Claudia…raises many questions.

By: Rich

Rich — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:56:31 +0000

I felt the same way about ground zero of the former WTC when I lived in NYC. And there hasn’t exactly been a big rush to rebuild there either…

By: jp!

jp! — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:21:32 +0000

These tourist trips are like paying a tour bus to drive you to a shelter so you can gawk at abused people with shattered lives (all in person).

NPR did some stories concerning the “tourism” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10292676

By: Prof Fury

Prof Fury — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:10:29 +0000

Oh man, this is a gut-punch. In a perverse way, this makes me curious to take one of those tours — I’d really like to know what the tour guide’s spiel is like. Do they try to justify what they’re doing along the lines Claudia mentioned? Do they just ignore the moral and ethical problems posed by their enterprise? Man.